Chapter 8
“Ijust don’t understand.” I fumed, slamming my teacup down into the porcelain saucer, instantly silencing the entire room.
I looked around the lovely room with its creme walls with splashes of natural green all lit by a massive glass skylight. The tearoom in The Wharton was a more refined and less garish version of the tearoom at the Ritz-Carlton in London. It was light, airy, and welcoming.
Now all the ladies were staring at me, looking down their noses with expressions that ranged from mild irritation to annoyance. A few were downright furious I had interrupted the vibe of the service.
I gave the room an apologetic and abashed look, communicating my sincerest apologies before turning back to my table.
My mind had been racing since leaving the courthouse.
I didn’t know what to do.
How was I supposed to deal with any of this?
The only thing I could think to do was get help from a few friends.
In life, we all knew it wasn’t what you knew, but who you knew.
Connections in high society were everything.
Maybe one of my friends had a father or a brother who was a brilliant enough lawyer to help me through this.
Hopefully, another one was a psychiatrist, because after what I had let happen in that conference room, I was clearly in need of psychiatric intervention.
Of course, that would only happen after everything else was settled.
Otherwise, it would be used against me.
If a man saw a professional for help, he was being smart.
If a woman did it, she was weak.
After I left the courthouse, I sent out several SOS text messages, and my friends rallied around me.
Within twenty minutes, I was sitting in my favorite chair, at the head of my favorite table at The Wharton, with a calming chamomile steaming in the pot in front of me and women glaring at me.
I’d kill for something stronger than tea in this moment.
Unfortunately, with a woman of my stature, it didn’t matter what I did as much as what it looked like I was doing. A single glass of wine at the bar might be perfectly fine, but a well-timed photo of that single glass of wine could write a false, inflammatory story that most would believe over the simple truth.
After all, a socialite falling to the dangers of drugs and alcohol made a much better story than a rich girl having a bad day. No one cared about the truth. They cared about the story.
They didn’t even need to try too hard with the story.
A talented photographer could take fifteen to twenty pictures of me in a single night, take it home, and change the background of the bar, the dress I was wearing, and the levels of wine in my glass to make it look habitual. I couldn’t risk it.
No wonder some of the older women snuck whisky into their tea.
It was technically against the rules, but we all knew they did it.
“So what does that mean?” one of the girls asked, pulling me back into the conversation.
“It means that I have somehow entered a time loop, and I’m now stuck in the fifties. Where a woman isn’t allowed to have her own fortune. It means that despite being an adult, I now have an overbearing gorilla in a suit in control of my finances.”
I left out the part about the “gorilla” being incredibly handsome and domineering, with a primal sexual energy that could make a woman lose all sense of propriety and place. Or that that same “gorilla” wanted to freaking marry me.
No point in boring my friends with the rougher details.
Thoughts of the rougher details brought back memories of his fingers inside me as he pulled a dark forbidden pleasure from my body. I’d never felt anything like that before. The mix of pain and pleasure had been exotic as well as erotic.
It was so incredibly wrong, and yet so deliciously right at the same time.
I pushed those thoughts away and took another long pull of my tea.
When I set my glass back down, Olivia, Amelia, and Charlotte were all looking at each other very uncomfortably.
Oh, damn. The man was their father! I should be more careful with what I said.
“Shoot, girls. I am so sorry. I know that he’s your father and your father-in-law, but…”
“Oh no,” Charlotte stopped me. “We understand. My father can be difficult—and complicated.”
“What she means to say,” Olivia interrupted her, “is that he’s an arrogant, control-freak, who treats his family like he treats his company board, and does whatever he wants without any thought to anybody else, ever.”
Amelia didn’t add anything, but just took another sip of her tea, probably using that to silence her own thoughts on the subject. It was one thing to say something about a man as his daughter. But it was something else entirely to say it as his daughter-in-law.
“I’m still confused,” Amelia said after a moment, putting down her cup. “Your lawyer didn’t do anything?”
“No, he didn’t argue it. He didn’t fight for me. He didn’t even give me a heads up on what was going to happen. It was like he, Lucian, and the judge had already decided everything, and this was just a formality.”
“That can’t be legal,” Amelia said, careful not to talk about her father-in-law directly. “You are entitled to effective counsel.”
“How do I go about filing something to overturn all of this?” I asked, resting my head in my hands for a moment.
“I have no idea,” Amelia said. “Maybe I could ask Harrison? But he has been so busy lately with some cases. Even Luc is helping him with parts of it.”
“Is that why they called Reid?” Charlotte asked. She was so smitten with her new husband, it was cute.
“I have no idea,” Amelia said. “Oh, I know who you should ask. My new sister-in-law, Eddie. She is going to law school, and she is a brilliant paralegal. She’d have to be to impress Harrison. Maybe she could help?”
“Really?” I asked, sitting up, feeling a glimmer of hope.
Surely another woman wouldn’t let me get steam rolled by the boys’ club.
“Maybe. Between law school and helping my brother, she is really busy. She never has time to come to tea with Rose and me or go shopping. Maybe she doesn’t like us, or we make her uncomfortable.”
“You could never make anyone uncomfortable,” Olivia said.
“Thank you. She is probably just really swamped with work. I think she is just as much of a workaholic as Harrison.”
“Then it’s a match made in heaven,” I said with a smile that I hoped reached my eyes.
I tried to stay focused on the conversation at hand, but my mind kept going back to Manwarring Sr. and how his hands had felt on my body.
And how his cruel smile made my heart race.
What a twisted thing to think, let alone feel. That man had me all kinds of confused and mixed up.
The conversation around me continued as I tried to push thoughts of my encounter with Lucian out of my head. What he had done was unconscionable.
I could never let that happen again.
It wouldn’t happen again.
I wondered how long I’d have to repeat that in my head before I believed it.
The truth was that I hadn’t wanted it at first. But somewhere in there, while he was groping my body, stealing my kisses, and heating my core, everything had changed. My brain stopped protesting the violation and instead celebrated the unfamiliar domination of it all.
My desires turned dark, seductive, and erotic.
Ladies like me were not supposed to behave that way, especially about a man so much older than myself. It was unbecoming for a lady to act on something so primal.
Was it his anger, his hot temper, or was it something else that made his body burn like that?
I had always known that Lucian had a lust for life and for conquest. Not that I had seen it before personally, but I had heard my father’s rantings and the rumors about what a vile man he was. The rumors covered everything from business deals done in bad faith to dealings with questionable enterprises.
It always made me wonder if he had ties to the criminal world.
He would hardly be the first man of his class to deal in the gray. But for most people, that meant insider trading, not brutish thugs, threats of violence, and mafia ties.
Of course, then there were the rumors about his lineage, those who said the Manwarrings did not belong in high society—education and net worth be damned.
He was not Old English money as he claimed to be, but instead came from impoverished Irish stock. They said that the Manwarrings made a fortune during prohibition with counterfeit whiskey. Those same people gossiped that it was to be expected that Lucian operated the way he did.
What else would you expect from a man whose fortune was built off of lies and deceit?
I had heard all of the rumors floating about them, but I never looked down on them for it.
I found the Manwarring clan to be interesting.
Every other family in our circle had been handed everything.
Many of the men never earned their titles or their wealth. They merely made back room deals on the golf course or in steam rooms and had other people manage everything.
So to see a family who took what they wanted instead of waiting for someone to give it to them, was intriguing.
My father, in particular, had hated Lucian Manwarring. I never knew why exactly, just that my father said he was a brute and did not operate by the rules of polite society.
The rules of polite society were built to keep those born with privilege on top and those not under their heel.
While Luc Manwarring was absolutely born into the same privilege, I wondered if he felt the newness of his money, only a few generations from poverty.
If my grandfather had been the one to build the Deiderich name and fill its coffers, would my father have been the same?
Was it the generations of wealth that bred the primal savagery out of the other men in my class?
Was that what made Lucian Manwarring Sr.’s blood run so much hotter than anyone else’s?
Was that why he could break through the ice still on my skin when nothing else could?
My mind drifted back to the things he had done to me, the way he’d touched me, and how even as he’d spanked me with that belt, it hurt, but the sting of each strike faded into a warm, soothing heat.
And then the way he made me react to him, that explosion of heat and pleasure he drew from my body as my own wetness trailed down my thighs.
Just thinking about it lit a small fire in my gut that melted the ice again. I had to push the feeling down.
Extinguish that flame with shame and regret.
Ladies like me were not supposed to feel like that.
It was the way he’d almost put his cock inside my core that filled me with the most shame.
Not only that he was about to push inside of me and take my virginity, but that I’d wanted him to. I was seconds away from pushing back into him myself when that knock sounded at the door and brought me back to reality.
Had I done so, I would have destroyed all of my plans for the future.
How could a man have made me feel so completely out of control that I would have discarded everything I believed in, for more of his touch?
The very idea of someone having that much control over me was terrifying.
“I just don’t know what to do!” I said again, stopping the conversation at my table that I had completely lost track of. Again.
My mother would have been ashamed of me for that outburst, and I knew it was rude, but I just couldn’t hold it in.
“Do you need to do anything?” Charlotte asked. “You still live in your own home. You still have access to some money. You just need to hold out for three years.”
I didn’t want to tell Charlotte that I was pretty certain her father intended to marry me himself well before those three years were up.
I also didn’t want to point out that I was in this position because of her. It was her wedding we had been leaving when the accident had happened.
It was her father who had taken my money because she ruined his plans.
She disobeyed her father, and now she was living happily ever after with her husband, and I was paying the price.
I chided myself. Such thoughts were immature and churlish and completely unfair to sweet, kind Charlotte.
“I can’t just do nothing. There is no telling what he will do in three years.”
“Let me reach out to Harrison and his wife. This isn’t the kind of thing they handle, but I am sure they know someone.” Amelia reached across the table and put her hand on mine.
I clasped her hand and gave her a grateful smile.
Maybe I could get out of this before Lucian made too big of a dent in my lifestyle or my father’s money.
“Okay, please allow me to pay for tea. It’s only fair since I occupied the conversation.” Just like that, I was back in a good mood and remembered the social graces I was raised into.
“Thank you,” the others said as I handed my black Amex to the white-gloved waiter.
Feeling a little stronger and ignoring thoughts of Lucian touching me and the wetness between my thighs that those thoughts brought, I was able to refocus on the conversation at hand.
Charlotte was shopping for a new home for her and her husband, and there were so many choices: the Upper West Side, trendy areas like SoHo, or maybe even some grand estate just outside the city.
We laughed at the notion of living outside the city until we saw the dreaminess in Charlotte’s eyes when she mentioned having a cozy place with a big kitchen to indulge her new cooking hobby.
Charlotte looked so smitten. I couldn’t even begrudge her happiness, even when it cost me my family and freedom.
“Ma’am.” The waiter had come back, standing next to the table awkwardly looking at the floor, a blush staining his cheeks.
“Yes?” I asked.
“I’m terribly sorry, but your card was declined.” He took out a large pair of gleaming silver sheers and cut my black Amex in half.
The entire dining room gasped as they unabashedly watched my embarrassment.
I could feel the beady little eyes of every woman taking in each detail so they could tell the stories to their friends and destroy my reputation for sport.
“There has to be some mistake,” I fumed as I gathered the pieces of black plastic off the pristine white tablecloth.
“No, ma’am,” the waiter said. “If you cannot provide a valid form of payment, we will have no choice but to call the police.”